Angel Trails
by Kepouros
Summary: This is a sporadically-updated yet growing series of shorts starring the angels of Supernatural, with maybe some Winchester shorts thrown in for good measure. CH. 10: CASTIEL'S GRACE GETS STOLEN.
1. Gabriel

**Authors Note: For those not in the loop, Sam's Club is a huge (re: size of three warehouses) store that sells everything from clothes to electronics to furniture. But this testament to America's consumerism sells mostly food: four-box packs of Cheerios, spices by the pound, meats, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, poultry and fish - all at 'members only' prices. Everything you could imagine. Restaurateurs and bulk-buying moms shop there because buying more at such a store means paying less per unit.  
**

One of the happiest days in Gabriel's innumerable years of existence was when he discovered Sam's Club. Or, more accurately, the dessert and bakery section at Sam's Club.

Gabriel had been zipping along his merry way, intent on causing fatal mischief to someone yet to be determined, when his ever-keen nose caught whiff of delicacies. Namely, of the sweet variety. This discovery brought his hunt for a punishable mortal to a screeching, midair halt. He hovered there, invisible and flapping his large wings, above the shopping center, triangulating this scent of sugar like a satellite. Target acquired, he zeroed in with all the accuracy of a Hellfire missile, ghosting right through the roof of the large building from which the scent emanated.

Suspended just below the fluorescent lights, Gabriel drank it all in. There were boxes of nearly every food imaginable, and in quantities that, in millenia past, would have fed a whole family of Cro-Magnons for a winter. People with shopping carts the size of luxury bathtubs scurried about, taking down boxes nearly their own size of paper towels, oatmeal, and cream of celery. But where was that sugar?

Gabriel spun and, with a comical gasp of delight, surveyed the bakery. The smells of caramel, chocolate, and cinnamon wafted up to his willing nose. He had to contain a holler of joy that would have shattered every flatscreen TV and window in the place. Heaven? Close enough.

Jumping forward a few hours in time was, literally, a snap for the archangel. The store was dark, the employees all gone, the shoppers MIA. Gabriel landed, folded his wings, and wandered through the aisles of wonderland.

Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks.

Could it be?

Surely, he was dreaming: such glories did not exist outside his Father's realm.

Yet, there it was.

Sinking to his knees before the display, Gabriel reached out with fingers shaking in awe to caress the ten-gallon bucket.

It was a display of 30-pound buckets of buttercream icing.

"Sorry, baked goods and confections," whispered the angel, pulling the tub to settle between his crossed legs on the floor and conjuring a spoon out of midair. "I know to whom my heart belongs." Ripping off the sealed lid, Gabriel murmured, "Father, bless this icing to the nourishment of my human vessel, and my body to your service. A-men!"

When the employees of Sam's Club opened the store that next morning, Marvin Gaye's song 'Let's Get It On' was on constant loop over the intercoms and every last pastry, muffin, and fudge square was gone, their empty containers strewn everywhere, perfectly clean.


	2. Castiel

What makes an angel an angel?

Is it their proximity to God? Is it their raw, unfathomable power? Is it the glowing pulse in the center of their beings that is their Grace?

Yes, yes, and yes. But that's not the singularly most identifiable trait of an angel. From the ceramic figures in Nativity scenes to the inked, aged representations in Bobby's books, they all have one thing in common. Or rather, two things.

Wings. An angel is nothing without their wings.

Mostly, the wings are tucked away, hidden under the skin, against the back, or, if the angel had enough 'juice', a lightspeed beck away in a multidimensional pocket.

Castiel was a soldier in the Lord's army, and had been for a long, long time. When in heaven, angels are treated as garrisons, as multiples. On earth, the gathering of so many would be detrimental. When angels gather in such numbers, even shielded from the human eyes and ears, a low thrum of power could still be felt to the passerby mortal, akin to a bass speaker's pulse at a concert. Angels can hide their bodies easily.

But they cannot hide their wings and bodies at the same time. If the wings come out, the rest of them follows.

Castiel, like all angels, could craft a bubble around himself that warded anything and everything supernatural. Within this bubble, he could hide, watch, wait...or attack. When he attacked, his angelic blade in hand and power to rip the cosmos at his fingertips and holy fire in his eyes, he would summon his wings to the plane of existence to aid him.

This fight with a high-level demon proved to be one such instance.

The limbs rip from their multidimensional storage and through Castiel's clothes, answering the call. They attach at the base of his Vessel's shoulder blades, multijointed and muscled like whipcords. They are HUGE, like three train cars from tip to sparking tip. The edge that cuts the air is stronger than anything known to man, even diamond. This hardened edge parries the supernatural blades and attacks of enemies. In fact, that is their first job once they manifest: the demon leaps forward with a stolen angel blade in his hands. Castiel is only surprised for a nanosecond that the demon went straight to physical contact, avoiding lashing out with telekinesis and magic. The tops of his wings form an X and catch the demon's blade, trapping it between the hardened edges.

Castiel's wings are no one particular color: such a color does not exist in the tiny collection of wavelengths the human eye can perceive. Suffice it to say they are all colors, and none at all. They show up to a perceptive human (which are few and far between) as a glimmer, like heat off a car hood. To demons and other angels, they are simply and utterly glorious.

The demons gets his blade free, snarling, baring teeth. Eyes roll to black and fingernails lengthen. He grips the blade tighter, warier now that he's gauged the angel's speed and strength. His next attack is much more precise, and Castiel is forced backwards, on the defensive, at the ferocity of it. The demon seems fatally determined to get under his defenses, under his wings where the sharp feathers and shielding edges are useless. Castiel should expect no less: this demon is only fifth from Lucifer in terms of power. He'd accidentally happened upon the demon while pursuing a lead on the Father's whereabouts. But, as he'd heard humans say, if you get lemons, you make lemonade.

But this lemonade may very well kill him.

The demon halts his foray, draws back a little, and sneers a taunt at the weakness of the angel he'd heard such impressive things about. His laugh is like crying babies and nails on a chalkboard.

In the brief reprieve, Castiel's wings arch up for the first joint, out for the second, and down for the third, the tips of the primaries forming the razor-sharp bars to a protecting cage around him. It is the fighting stance of thousands and thousands of angels, archangels, seraphs, and cherubs before him, and for a split second, he can _feel _them. His ancestors, echoes of their Graces trilling in his ear. The more he focuses, the louder it becomes. Then he can _see_ them. They stand at his back and around him, white-robed, swords at the ready, silent and an unspoken reminder of what, of _who _Castiel is, of the brotherhood he is part of. His Grace jerks at his core with a sudden influx: they're reaching out from the beyond, channeling their power to him!

He raises his True voice, multiplied a thousand-thousand times over, in a death-dealing cry to the demon. The resonance melts the demon's flesh from his bones, and sets fire to it at a temperature hotter than white phosphorus. A flash of white-hot, unholy pain stabs through Castiel's back. His spine arches to the point of breaking, face contorted at the shock. All of a sudden...

it stops.

With a satisfying sort of itch like a loose tooth being pulled, Castiel's wings shatter like mirrors to a reveal a new set underneath. They look like two sets laying flat against each other, white on top and black on bottom. The mirror shards turn to dust. As he watches, the wings separate, sliding apart, the normal pair at the top and the new ones migrating to his floating ribs. Castiel, open-mouthed, gives them an experimental flex. They respond to every twitch, every breeze, the short feathers ruffling like grass in the wind even when he stands stock still. They shine like a sourceless sun.

Castiel looks at the ash-and-goo pile that was once the fifth most powerful demon. Although he loathes these affronts to his Father's creations because they are darkly evil, to this one in particular, he is grateful.


	3. Things Lost

They had just lost the cursed rabbit's foot. Sam was kicking himself for it, and the intensity of his kicking and Dean's determination notched up every time another unlucky thing happened to Sam.

Sam was the last thing he had left in the world, and Dean would sooner be shot full of rock salt where the sun didn't shine than let Sam be yanked away from him by something as stupid as this. He heard Gigantor's footsteps stop behind him, and turned to look.

There his little brother stood, looking beat down and dejected and just plain tired. Like it just wasn't fair.

"I lost my shoe."

Four words, and Dean was violently thrown back to the past, back to when Sam and he were children. He could see himself walking Sam to the bus stop, could see him cutting up toddler Sam's food at some crappy diner while John was MIA, could see himself stealing Christmas presents for Sam that year John had been out hunting, could see himself beating the tar out of someone who DARED TO THREATEN THE BABY BROTHER OF DEAN WINCHESTER.

"What?" Dean asked, forgetting what had been said, turning around in the dark, empty parking lot.

For a split second, six-foot-four, 240-pound Sam Winchester was a skinny, naive little kid again, puppy eyes intact. "I lost my shoe," he repeated.

Dean felt his heart break just a little at that kid-like look on Sam's face, like Dean held the keys to the universe.

Dear God, it wasn't fair how much he loved his brother.

**(Author's Note: This idea came about by watching the Supernatural episode when Sam gets the lucky rabbit's foot, loses it, and begins to suffer the resulting bad luck that, eventually, will be the death of him. Not if Dean has anything to say about it. That look on Sam's face when he lost his shoe in the storm drain just broke my heart. This is Dean's perspective.)  
**


	4. Gabriel 2

Gabriel sat in a bar.

Be careful, dear mortal, not to fall into the misconstrued belief that this was an everyday occurrence. Gabriel was quasi-omnipotent archangel, a master prankster, a helluva lover, and (pardon the pun) a devilish looker. He did not frequent human watering holes, or at least, hadn't since the Flood. That had kinda ruined the whole 'water is soothing' aspect.

And another thing. He hadn't become a diehard bar hopper until the instant he'd seen HER ducking into O'Malley's from a cross the street.

She was standing at one of those really high tables with uncomfortable chairs, laughing with her friends. Her hair was the color of threshed wheat, silken to the eye (but to the touch...?), her face heart-shaped and with vibrant green eyes. Her body was elongated at nearly every point that drew his eye, but always stopping just short of runway quality. And her skin? All of it playing peek-a-boo from the cute little green TJ Maxx dress she wore that hugged her body _just so _suggested to our observant archangel that she was a summer. Just like him.

Over the course of the evening, Gabriel moved around the bar, waiting to catch her attention. When he did, and their eyes locked for that split second, Gabriel gave a small, aloof smile (when he really wanted to walk up and lick the sugar from her glass rim, preferably while she held it), an 'I'm interested' nod, and a light toast of his soda.

What, no alcohol for the archangel? Come on, dear reader, keep up. This is the Ultimate Sugar Fiend. Hence, he chose the most sugary drink in the bar.

In retrospect, maybe he should've gone Winnie the Pooh and just conjured a squeeze bottle of honey. That would've drawn attention.

Patient as the saint he was made out to be, Gabriel watched her. Her glances his way became more frequent, and after a head-ducked conversation with her girlfriends, eliciting encouraging looks and exclamations from them, she detached from the gaggle and made her way shyly over to him.

Wow. A girl who actually knew how to be shy.

Gabriel smiled charmingly as she strode up, gesturing to the booth seat opposite him. "Hi, I'm Gabriel."

She smiled, a cute, quirky thing that dimpled one side of her mouth, and slid into the booth. "I'm Summer."

Well how about that? The irony did not escape him save for a laugh.

"What's funny?" Summer asked, sipping her drink. It wasn't really an alcoholic beverage, he noticed. Girl had scruples, too.

Now, to serve the ball without sounding creepy. "From your tan, I'd say that's a pretty apt name."

She blushed. _Perfect. _"You're not hard on the eyes, either." Another mouth-quirk, another sip. She obviously didn't flirt much, but that didn't deter either of them.

It was time to bust out the biggest question. This would make or break whatever it was brewing in the air between them. "So," Gabriel asked casually. "What's you favorite candybar?"

"Snickers," she replied without hesitation, then laughed. Without Hesitation At All.

"Mine too," he smiled. Oh, yeah. This was gonna work out perfectly.


	5. The Jacket

Dean's first jacket that he could remember he received on his tenth birthday. It was like any other kids': cloth, winterized, with pockets, army green like his eyes, with drawstrings on the hood. The plastic things that kept the hood pulled soon cracked, and were lost. He could remember every little tear and how it got there, every picked thread on the cuffs. He wore that jacket out, because it was the only one he had. When it got warmer, he was stuck: too cold to take it off, too hot in the sun to keep it on. So he wore it open in front and wiped the sweat from his brow.

His second jacket was dark blue. It swished when he swung his arms because of the fabric, but it broke the wind and the flannel lining was warm on his skin. His old coat got passed down to Sam, who outgrew it quickly. John said that when Dean stopped growing, they would get him a leather jacket.

He stopped growing. He remembered how excited he was when the day came to buy the leather jacket. He'd been looking into store windows and pouring over catalogs for days (the only shopping he ever got accused of). But John flung open the hotel door and began to stuff things into pillowcases, saying they needed to go, _fast. _The Indian man clopping up the stairs and yelling insults at their backs swept away any shopping plans that day.

Soon after that, he went on his first hunt with John. An angry spirit. His old coat couldn't keep the chill bumps from rising on his arms, or quite protect him from the heat of the salted bones' flames.

Afterward, his father gripped him on the shoulder, a silent 'good job'. Dean felt like a man.

Then John was gone. Left him to care for Sammy.

The coat held out for three more winters, until Sam's freshman year at Stanford, before a tumble with a wendigo tore a sleeve nearly off. He was lucky his arm didn't go with it.

He finally bought the leather jacket, using a stolen credit card. He even charmed the cutie behind the counter into using her employee discount. Outside the store, he tore off the tags and slipped into the smooth lining. It felt heavy. Strong. He liked the idea that a dead animal's skin would take the worst of whatever fate offered him.

Over time, the leather jacket acquired myriad little imperfections. Scratches here, here, and here. Scuffs on the elbows and along one side, where a shapeshifter dragged him across concrete. It smelled like the cigarettes of shady bars, bacon breakfasts, blood, and sweat. And maybe a hint of wood fire.

But, just like him, that jacket could take anything and come out whistling.


	6. Uriel

Uriel was not pleased.

The garrison was sloppy today, wingtips straying into foreign flight paths, eyes unfocused, sword hands loose. They know it: he's called them down severely, but the indiscipline persists. He will not stand for it.

He lines the Father's soldiers up in front of him, draws his angel-killing blade from nowhere. "Choose one among you to fight me to the death," he says.

His statement was met with the silence in which one could hear a pinfeather drop. Horrified faces meet his cold, steely eyes.

Even though he has to do this, the 'one for the good of all' argument echoes false in his mind. Uriel is not a kind, harp-plucking angel of eld. He is battle-scarred, war-roughened, world-jaded. Some of the feathers missing from his wings will not grow back, burned at the follicle by tangling with demons. Once, long ago, he was capable of compassion. But that emotion was rasped away by the whetstone of his duty, leaving a razor-sharp angel bereft of such trivialities.

Once, long ago, he was capable of compassion. Now, he is free from that burden.

The garrison chooses the best fighter from among them. In truth, Uriel hears the fighter raise his voice as he insists the challenge-meeter be him. He has the best chance.

Uriel's smile is cold enough to make a demon shiver. Even the best chance from among this garrison means slim to none.

Uriel retains his reptilian smile as he meets and holds the gaze of his opponent. Without dropping the look, he unfurls his huge wings. Even in the angel kingdom, size matters. His wings are some of the largest, even among the archangels.

The fighter unfurls his own, of a magnificent grey-speckled hue, and his blade appears in his hand. Uriel is only mildly surprised when the fighter charges first.

Uriel is a symphony of pain, a meter of misery, a cadence of chaos. The other fighter doesn't stand a chance against an angel three times his senior.

As the fighter lays hemorrhaging Grace on the ground, gurgling his last breath, Uriel steps over him. "This is what your lack of discipline has caused," he says, so the back rows must strain to hear him. He intends to make them all responsible for their comrade's death, that they may be inspired by the injustice. "Continue in the way you have, and I will pick another of you to join your comrade."

Their faces are sober, some angry. A few of them shed a tear for the fallen brother.

Uriel allows them this emotion, while they still possess it.

Then, it's back to drills. The heavens and earth are not going to protect themselves.


	7. Anna

Uriel's shout of "No!" echoed through the shanty cabin. The harsh angel's exclamation seemed to bring the skirmish between Alastair, Castiel, and the Winchesters to a halt,

Anna felt no small amount of relief when she reclaimed that which was rightfully HERS from the angel's neck. She felt elated when she threw the vial to the ground and her Grace swirled around her.

She felt a little afraid when it began to fill her mouth, flow down her throat, pool in the very capillaries of her body and infuse her bones.

What was that pressure? That insistent building with her skin...

Oh, God, no.

Her Grace had finished reclaiming her, and Anna's knees gave way with a weakness she had not noticed before. "Shield your eyes," she managed to get out, unsteadily rising to her feet. The pressure was too much, too much for her to hold in. She couldn't contain it.

Why this was happening, she did not have time to reason out. It was going to atomize her before her synapses could finish forming the thoughts. She could feel her skin cells dissolving, her bones disappearing.

"Shield your eyes," she insisted, trying to get the point across in a mouthful of words. It worked: Sam and Castiel did as she bade.

She had to prioritize her seconds, for they were few. She glanced to Dean, who was looking at her with fear. Fear for her, not of her. But there was also a little gladness, because she was safe from both the angels and the demons now that she had her Grace back. Anna wanted to smile, and her heart squeezed with joy just before it burned up in cold, holy fire.

Dean cared for her. She knew, now.

She could die in peace, consumed by the blue, fierce, sacred light.

_"Shield your eyes!"_

Anna exploded in the blaze of ethereal, heavenly light and went sailing across the stratosphere...

...the stars...

...the cosmos...

the universe.

There she rested, at the very edge of the ever-expanding existence, and let her newly returned wings fold around her. The shock of having been reborn, having been hurled to the ragged selvedge of the savage known faded.

She would return to the planet Earth, in its quaint dimension, when the time was right.

Anna closed her eyes, and let restorative sleep take her.


	8. Raphael

Manifesting for the second time is both taxing and exhilarating. I answer the summons, that pull that reaches across the cosmos. I cross eons, millenia, dimensions...spiraling and streaming and falling and coalescing into that grimy room in that dilapidated house.

With fingers only slightly hesitant from lack of practice, I weave my Grace into the quarks, ions, atoms, molecules, cells, bones, muscles, skin and features of my vessel. I imbue the construct with my power, rejoicing in the swiftness of its summon, and feel my wings arc from my back.

As my gladness to have form lifts my spirit, my wings and power blend. It is as easy as oxygen and nitrogen being breathed into the same lungs. The bolts of electricity that are the easiest revelation of my angelic strength twitch down my wings, tickling the feathers that are invisible to the human eye, the energy as familiar and welcome to me as a favored pet.

It doesn't matter that the hunter Dean Winchester and the infamous angel Castiel are there, watching me with wide eyes.

I know they have summoned me here to ask me if I know where God is. I know they will do me some sort of harm.

Even though they entrap me in a circle of burning holy oil, my spirit is intoxicated by being back on this playground that is Earth. Though my newly filled body is confined here, my heart is drunk with freedom.

I'm back.

* * *

**Seeing the imagery of Raphael's wings outlined with electricity made the hair on my arms and scalp prickle. Just sayin'...**

**You can search for the footage on the Tube of You, keywords 'archangel raphael supernatural'. **

**Thanks for all the love, readers and lurkers!  
**


	9. Castiel 2

There resides in the lowest of dimensions, in the most awful of realities, a plane of existence that only angels, demons, and damned souls come to. Rare is the creature to come. Even rarer, the creature to leave. Those souls which streak across its starless, sunless, moonless, smoke- and despair-filled crimson stratosphere see a barren wasteland with a massive mountain at its center. It is the last thing they see before pitching into this moutain's mouth, and into darkness never-ending.

The realm is devoid of anything truly alive, littered with skeletons of playthings tossed aside, and the occasional scavenger demon's footprint as they pick over the scraps of cartilage on the carcasses and dream of being let near the racks of tortured souls, where they may feast on fresh blood and flesh.

* * *

Castiel walked across this blazing hot wasteland with purpose, untouched by the elements, leaving his own footprints upon the damned world. His wings were out, attracting soot and dust from the air, inking the sky with his feathers. His blue eyes blazed with holy fire. His skin, or what rendition of it was manifest in this, literally, God-forsaken place, was crackling with his Grace and with the most ancient and sacred battle preparedness.

He clenched his angel blade in his hand, and felt its thrum of power. He reveled in the security it gave him as his palm molded to the handle's engravings, even though he and his brothers were about to lay siege to Hell itself.

To his right and left, his brothers walked with him. Armored in their plates and mail and carrying identical blades, Castiel's garrison was ready for this battle. He could see it in the clench of their jaws, the surety of their steps, the glint in their eyes.

At the base of the mountains Castiel reflected on how easy it was to get into Hell. The residents, or at least those wielding the razors and white-hot prods, had no qualm with anyone who wanted to enter their black, bleak abyss. They didn't mind even the hundreds of angels coming to pay a visit, such as the ones converging now on the evil, gigantic crag sticking like a finger from the wastes. What those angels wanted to take however, was a different story.

The angels crested the mountain, and those in the first ranks looked down into the steaming, baking, cess pool of a volcano that was Hell. The screams of souls suspended in eternal torment reached their ears, shaking the younger beings' determination. Castiel wondered which of those screams belonged to the Righteous Man, Dean Winchester, whom they sought to free. They had to get to him before he could be tricked into breaking the first of the 66 seals binding Lucifer, or the mission would be in vain.

Across the smoking pit, Castiel could see other garrisons perched on the nose of the volcano: five total, all that Heaven could spare for this mission despite its importance. The generals of each of them, including Castiel, raised their glinting blades, identifying themselves both to the angels they led and the howling, shrieking mass of demons they were about to engage in the Pit below.

Time was rapidly growing thin, taut as a Fate's thread and frayed with hunger for battle. Castiel felt the brush of Graces behind him: their zeal, their bloodthirst, their desire to complete the mission, and their ache to kill as many demons as crossed their paths.

The lot had been drawn, and it was Castiel's privilege to call them to battle. So he tightened his grip on his blade, splayed his wings, and roared his battle cry.

All around the crater, the cry was echoed. Hundreds of angels shouted and dove, down, down, deep into the Pit.

Castiel led his garrison, crashing through the chains that suspended the souls in the upper tier like they were string. With strong beats of his wings, he stirred the acrid and sulfurous air in the huge shaft. The combined billowing of the wings of so many angels brought to life much ash and dust to blear their vision. It wasn't enough to dissuade the clashing of blades, though, or obscure the flashing death throes of demons burned out of existence with holy fire.

Still, Castiel dropped, allowing his brothers to cross swords with the demons. Letting his wings spill the air just enough to slow his descent, he looked into each soul's face as he went, ignoring their screams and pleas. Castiel was looking for _him, _the Righteous Man, and him only. The others had decided their own fate.

Down, down, past the sinister aquarium-like bubbles of molten lava imbedded in the sides of the shaft, in which swam the hideous husks of maimed souls.

Down, down, past the coal pits, where the tenders of the flames piled the glowing rocks high on souls trapped in their depths. Those demons ran at him, intent on rending him limb from limb, but Castiel pitched his voice high and melted them in mid-step.

Down, down, through endless stories and levels of tortures horribly creative and disgusting, which Castiel blocked from his mind. He was getting closer: there was a small opening in the floor of the volcano, and he angled his wings towards it. Beneath the floor housed the worst tortures...and his mission's focus.

Down, down, though that relatively narrow hole in the floor, where the ugliest of demons practiced their tortures and the most pitiable souls were flayed of every last bit of humanity strung out on the racks. When they rose from the racks, they would be demons, too.

Castiel landed with enough force to crater the ground, and cause the racks nearest him to bend away. The demons at this level were stunned at his entrance, and the angel grasped this opportunity to arrange his wings for a fight, and raise his blade. With a moment to spare, Castiel cast his senses about beyond what he could see, seeking. _There. _In the cavern against the far wall, the faint pulsing signature of the soul he'd come for. He'd know it anywhere, for he'd memorized its taste.

Cutting down any demon who opposed him, Castiel made a path into the cavern, to last rack in the farthest row. There, hanging naked and limp, was Dean Winchester. Or what was left of him.

_"You are too late,"_ said a voice. Alistair stepped from behind the rack, unarmed, smirking. _"We got what we wanted. The seal is broken."_

Castiel's face melted into fury. He lashed at the demon, but Alistair laughed, turned to smoke, and disappeared into the cracks of the volcano's wall.

A few more angels, having disposed of their opponents, drop to Castiel's side. "Stay here," he orders them. "Keep watch, and defend me as I raise him."

They nod, their blades and feet arranged in fighting stances, and turn their backs.

Castiel sheaths his blade and steps up to the rack. The floor around it is soak with blood, slippery even to him. "Dean Winchester," he says, rousing the soul.

The Righteous Man jerks at Castiel's first touch, and yells with a hoarse and well-used voice when the angel accidentally brushes his wounds. Castiel tries not to dwell on the wounds. Suffice it to say, the soul of Dean Winchester was threads away from being completely and utterly snuffed out. Limbs barely hung, bereft of all but the largest nerves and blood vessels like horrific classroom models. Skin strained to hold together. Almost a quarter of his bones were visible, bared to the harsh rack's metal. Blood soaked every inch of him, the rack, and the surrounding floor. With decisive fingers and quick movements, Castiel tried to grip the pins that clamped the metal cuffs over Dean Winchester's wrists, but he could not get a hold of them.

The soul would probably just fall to pieces in its present condition, Castiel realizes. He has to put it back together first.

He reaches for his Grace, spreads it out like a blanket between his hands, and lays it on Dean Winchester, rack and all. It seeps into the soul, sinks into it, its purpose making it glow along the myriad wounds and lace them shut, shove bones back into skin, wipe away bruises like soot. Castiel knows what this soul's body has to look like, too, and reconstructs it as easily as he would his own: every freckle, hair, and cell in under a second of necessary, merciful agony.

The soul arched at the sudden, pitiless healing, voice stuck at a pitch that shakes the cavern, but soon collapsed whole and complete to the rack.

Hearing the fighting sounds from above coming closer, Castiel summoned his blade and hastily clanged the cuffs off of Dean Winchester's ankles and wrists. The soul was limp, and the angel caught it by the upper arm, branding the still-pliable new flesh with his power-hot hand. The Righteous Man does not feel it, unconscious from the massive healing, but the scar will stay.

"Let's go," Castiel ground out to the angels guarding him.

They walked back to the mouth of the cavern, hardly opposed, and with hard downstrokes began to ascend.

Then the problems started.

Demons had amassed topside of the hole in the floor that the angels darted from, and set about to kill them. Castiel was burdened with the weight of another being, and was struggling to wield his blade and keep up with his escort at the same time. He tried to yell at them to slow down, but they were tasting the relatively cleaner air of the wastes and trying to keep from being skewered on the way up. They did not hear him over the din of thousands of demons scrounging for a piece of him.

The demons' arrows and javelins and spears bounced off of Castiel's armor, testing its metal. The angel wasn't terribly worried about those blows: it was keeping the soul of Dean Winchester from getting perforated that concerned him most. In a moment he'd erected an impenetrable field around the Righteous Man, but that moment of distraction cost him. A demon managed to graze his cheek with a ball of flame, and Castiel shouted and threw his blade into the creature's heart. He summoned it back, and continued his ascent, bringing powerful wings up and down, up and down, a metronome, a heartbeat of freedom to come.

Funny, how the volcano seemed more shallow when he was falling through it. His wings were growing tired. An angel, tired! Castiel would have laughed at the absurdity if he wasn't fighting for his very life, and that of the scrap of a soul he carried.

But Castiel did not come from an angelic line of quitters. He dug deep, and surged higher and higher, outstripping the demons' thrown weapons, their telekinetic powers, their horrid insults. He closed his eyes and gave it everything he had.

Castiel could smell the change in air as he rose. The scents of burning flesh and despondency were fading. And then, suddenly, they were gone.

Castiel breached the lip of the crater and flared his tired wings to stop his momentum. His garrison waited for him edgily, and roared with excitement when they saw him carrying their prize.

They didn't know that they were too late, that the mission was in vain.

But Castiel tried not to dwell on that. Instead, he looked down at the soul he'd reconstructed and couldn't help but smile. "Welcome back, Dean Winchester," he said. With a movement like he was caressing the air before him, Castiel opened time and space and fed the soul of Dean Winchester through it. As he sent the soul flying back to its fleshly home like a shooting star, Castiel allowed himself time to wonder, _What will this hunter do with his second chance?_


	10. Castiel 3

**Author's Note: Sad, I know. But I gotta write SOMETHING for this season. **

* * *

It felt like dying without the release.

Arms bound with cold cuffs in the sterile, whitegraybright room, a brother angel taking the path of Judas Iscariot, the mad glint of surety in his eye.

Naomi dead in a pool of deep crimson on her desk, stormy eyes unseeing.

_A blade on his neck._

_A hatefully small slice. _

His grace flowing out of him, leaving him empty.

Chill.

Echoing insides.

A fiery rage in a deep icy tomb in his chest, because he can't fathom, can't think, can't breathe.

Oh Father, if he can't be an angel anymore...

His vessel's lungs couldn't hold enough air in all the inhales of its life to give adequate voice to the scream, so he keeps it inside, like some insidious hive of bees that sting him over and over with acid, crawling in his thoracic cavity, but he feels numb even to _that._

So this is what the humans call shock. Feeling, but not feeling. Distant, like under miles of ocean.

He is left as a forlorn, paper-thin husk of himself.


	11. Anonymous

**Author's Note: This is written from the POV of one of the anonymous angels in the season finale.**

* * *

Some wave of energy, of change, of _wrongness_ flings itself across all of Creation, and I feel my wings seize in midflight.

It is heart-stopping, and I can see my own horror reflected in the faces of the angels around me as their pinions give them a few seconds' worth of coasting, then their momentum draws to a close.

And we begin to fall, fall, _fall._

We fall across dimensions, dropping where we are. We descend through stratosphere, puncturing atmospheric layers like needles through cloth. Wind shrieks in my ears, makes my eyes stream, rips at my skin and feathers, and that's never happened before. I've got a long time before I impact, though, to think it through.

Streaking all around, like floating embers from fireworks, is my at-odds family. The fire of the plummet is due in part to our power burning away, encasing us in flames. Not the honeyed, crystalline blue flames of our holy Grace, but the incensed, wicked fires of simple physics. A body with wings falling to earth. The sacredness of flight no longer applies, and now, Newton's laws take over.

We are grotesque mockeries of meteors. Once-powerful wings drag like useless fins behind us as we dive without volition, the feathers singeing then melting then blowing away into ashes that liter our trails in the form of smoke.

What is happening? What has _HAPPENED?!_

I can feel the mental empathic howl of every last one of my brothers and sisters as the earth and ocean loom closer...


End file.
